


Navy Blue (I Love You So)

by MissHazelA



Category: Glee
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-29
Updated: 2013-01-29
Packaged: 2017-11-27 11:11:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/661310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissHazelA/pseuds/MissHazelA
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Back in Colorado, there was a girl, and Hunter loved her.<br/>Rating: PG13 for some cursing and mentions of sex.<br/>Warnings: Character illness and death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Navy Blue (I Love You So)

**Author's Note:**

> I got this idea after 4x07 but had not seen 4x11 when I wrote it, so I have no idea whether Hunter was given a canon backstory or not.

 

Hunter Clarington was not the type of person to panic. It simply wasn’t in his nature, or if it had been at one point, military school had _definitely_ taken care of it.

It was just that he’d lost his phone, and the fact that he’d spent an hour turning his room upside-down, missing his afternoon run, did _not_ mean he was panicking.

Losing a phone was not particularly panic-inducing in and of itself, though he really couldn’t afford a new one. It wasn’t about the phone. That could be replaced. The photos on it, though, were a different story.

Everything was a mess. The bed was unmade for the first time since he’d started at Dalton, the sheets torn off and crumpled on the floor. The contents of his desk were everywhere, drawers open and spilling papers. His school bag had literally been turned upside-down. And he _still_ couldn’t find it.

The only thing that could make the situation worse was Sebastian, and speak of the devil, there he was—strutting in like he owned the place (which, in a way, being Hunter’s roommate, he sort of did). He stopped short, though, when he saw the chaos.

“Um,” he began, staring at Hunter. “Are you okay?”

Hunter resisted the urge to throw a textbook at his roommate and forced himself to take deep, calming breaths. “Have you seen my phone?”

Sebastian raised an eyebrow. “All this”—he gestured to the chaos that enveloped their shared dorm room—“is over a missing phone?”

Hunter sighed, mentally counting to ten. It didn’t work, so he went to twenty. “It’s not about the _phone_. But yes, it’s missing.”

“Oh, shit, you should have said something.” Sebastian reached into the pocket of his blazer and produced a phone. Hunter’s phone. “You left it after third period. I completely forgot. Sorry.”

“Give me that!” Hunter snatched it away from his roommate, who damn near flinched at his anger.

“Dude, chill out. If I’d known it was such a big deal I would have tracked you down.”

Hunter didn’t look at him, too busy scrolling through the files on his phone to make sure they were all still there. “I swear to god, Smythe, if you fucked with it…”

“Whoa, whoa, slow down. I didn’t fuck with _anything_. It was on one of the tables in the library and I picked it up. I meant to give it back but I just _forgot_. And yeah, I looked at a couple of the pictures, but just to figure out whose phone it was. I didn’t mess with it at all. I swear.”

Hunter was still too keyed up to respond, so he satisfied himself with sending a ‘you better not have’ glare at Sebastian, who shrugged and walked into the room, throwing his bag down on his bed and pulling off his blazer.

Hunter had just turned to assess the damage he’d done to his room when Sebastian spoke again.

“Though I gotta say… I’d be straight as a fucking arrow, too, if I had a girlfriend that hot.”

It was like a stab. Hunter knew that Sebastian was just trying to get a rise out of him like he always did, but this time, it worked. He gritted his teeth, willing himself to calm down. “I’d _appreciate_ it if you didn’t talk about her that way. Or at all.”

He could practically hear Sebastian smirk. “Oh, touched a sore spot, did I? What, did she dump your ass or something?”

He took a deep breath and made another attempt at counting to ten before he turned to face Sebastian. He knew what he looked like in that moment: tense and taut and stretched, cold with rage. His tone was flat and even when he responded, “Not exactly. She died six months ago.”

In another situation, the expression on Sebastian’s face would have been comical. He became a cartoonish parody of shock: eyes round, mouth dropping open, eyebrows practically up to his hairline. “Oh, shit. Oh, shit, Hunter, I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”

He responded only with an icy shrug, but Sebastian wasn’t done.

“Hunter, I just—Oh my god. If I’d known, I never would have said anything. I swear I didn’t fuck with the pictures.”

He just shrugged again. He didn’t want to talk about it. “Like you said, you didn’t know.”

 

~~~~~~

 

He met Emily on their first day of sixth grade. They sat next to each other in homeroom, though he didn’t notice her at the time. He noticed her four hours later, right after lunch. She was in the hallway, standing at her locker talking to a friend. He noticed her red hair, but thought nothing of it.

That is, until he saw the group of boys approaching. They’d been at it all day. It was a juvenile prank—walk up behind a girl and snap her bra strap—but it never failed to send their victim into a spiral of shame and embarrassment. Already that day they’d made a girl in homeroom cry.

Hunter may have only been eleven years old, but they pissed him off. His parents (both ex-Navy) had drilled into him from a very young age that girls were to be treated with respect.

He started toward the group, intending to tell them to leave the girl alone, but they got to her first. The first boy reached for her shoulder.

A split second later, the boy was down on the ground, holding his nose, his cohorts scattering as the red-haired girl took another swing at them. Her shouted taunts followed them as they pulled their injured friend to his feet and retreated down the hall.

Everything was silent as an entire class of middle-schoolers stared at her. When she noticed them, she stopped shouting, and took a long moment to look around at all of them.

“What are you all looking at?” she asked, challenging and loud, before turning back to her locker.

He decided right then and there that he _had_ to be friends with that girl. Even if it was just for his own safety.

He approached cautiously. “Hi. That was awesome.”

She looked up at him suspiciously. She was petite and skinny, with more freckles than anyone could count, but she had a hell of a glare. “Yeah, I know. I’m Emily.”

“Hunter.”

“I know.” When he looked at her in confusion, she added, “You sit next to me in homeroom.”

“Nice to meet you, Emily. I hope I never get on your bad side.”

 

They were an inseparable team within days, with perpetually skinned knees and messy hair. Living only a couple blocks apart, they saw each other nearly every day. They got braces the same month (Hunter’s blue, Emily’s green) in the seventh grade and wouldn’t smile even at each other for days. Less than two weeks after that, they got three days of detention for stealing the school bully’s bike and hanging it in a tree.

They were almost constantly in some sort of minor trouble. Emily was everything Hunter had never been: mischievous and reckless and loud, with a great sense of humor and seemingly no concept of fear. She was the girl who climbed up the swing set to balance on the cross bar. (She fell and broke her arm, and he was the first to say “I told you so.”) He, on the other hand, was overly serious and quiet, raised by strict parents who expected a lot from him. Her mother was a total hippie, as proven by Emily’s middle name (Sunshine). They were completely different, and disagreed about nearly everything, but somehow, he was always dragged into her ridiculous schemes.

They stayed like that throughout middle school, but when the summer before ninth grade rolled around, everything changed.

He’d always known he’d go to the same military academy his father had attended for high school. It wasn’t even up for discussion—it was just assumed. Emily, on the other hand, refused to acknowledge it, as if by simply ignoring it, she could prevent him from leaving. That didn’t work, of course, and before they knew it, he was packing his suitcase.

The morning of his departure, she was already sitting on his front steps when he went outside. He looked her over carefully as she stood. In three years, she’d gotten a little taller, but not much. She’d never had much in the way of baby fat, and was at the awkward stage where she was all angles, with knees too big for her legs. Her face was unusually serious, and he noticed her bottom lip was trembling.

“Hi Emily.” Her stare made him uncomfortable. Lately, a lot of things about her made him uncomfortable. He simply didn’t know what to feel.

She crossed her arms over her chest. “I don’t want you to go.”

He sighed. “I have to.”

She just squared her shoulders. Even he could tell that she was holding back tears. “But what am I supposed to do without my best friend?”

“Emily, I’m not leaving _forever_. I’ll be back for Christmas.”

She bit her lip and her tears escaped, tracking down her freckled cheeks. “But it won’t be the _same_. I need you here with me.”

He reached out ineffectually, unsure whether giving her a hug would help. They weren’t the type to hug.

He never got the chance. She planted both her hands on his chest and shoved him away, then took off running toward her house. He shouted after her to come back, but she didn’t even look.

 

When he came home for Christmas, she was waiting on his front steps again, bundled into an oversized, hand-me-down winter coat and bright pink scarf. As soon as he got out of the car, she ran to him, throwing her arms around his neck and knocking him into a snow bank.

 

That summer, they were a team again, but something had changed. He was different—still serious, but less shy and quicker to laugh. She was still rebellious and loud and cheerful, but somehow calmer.

There was a strange distance between them, too. It wasn’t a big change, but there was no longer the casual ease between them. In quiet moments—and somehow, there were suddenly a lot of them—he found they sat farther apart, touched less. And when they did, even unintentionally, it was uncomfortable, in a weird hormonal sort of way they made _sure_ to never acknowledge. It was almost a relief for him to head back to school in the fall.

 

Christmas came around again, and Hunter had a plan. Every year, his parents attended a formal party with their Navy friends, and every year, he got dragged along. It was miserable—there was almost no one else his age, which often resulted in him getting stuck with the little kids.  He’d toyed with the idea of inviting Emily to go with him freshman year, but chickened out at the last minute and gone by himself.

This year, though, was going to be his year.

He called her the day after Thanksgiving as he did every Friday. He wasn’t permitted to have his phone during the day, but in the hours between dinner and curfew, he was free to talk, and calling Emily to catch up had become a comforting weekly ritual. When he was away at school, he missed her voice, her jokes, her laugh. He even missed her teasing—as soon as he told her he’d joined the choir, she began pestering him to hear what they were working on, and wouldn’t let up until he sang at least a few bars.

She said yes, with no hesitation. He thought Christmas break would never come.

 

His father made him wear his dress uniform, which he thought was stupid. It was stiff and uncomfortable, and what the hell was the point of coming home if he had to wear the uniform anyway? However, like a lot of things, it simply wasn’t up for discussion, so the night of the party, he did his hair, got dressed (with all the formal trimmings), and walked over to Emily’s house.

He realized that the extra effort to get the uniform right was worth it when Emily’s mother opened the door and her mouth dropped open in shock. “Oh my goodness, Hunter, is that really you?”

He grinned at her. He couldn’t help but feel a little (undeservedly) proud. “Hi, Mrs. P. Is Emily ready to go?”

“Not yet.” She rolled her eyes, fondly. “You know that girl, she’s never been on time once in her life. But come in, it’s freezing!”

He stepped inside, grateful to be out of the cold. Emily’s house was small but comfortable, full of threadbare second-hand furniture and decorated everywhere with her mother’s art. He always felt cozy and safe whenever he went over—which is probably why he’d had dinner there every other night for most of middle school.

They chatted a little about how things were going at the academy while they waited for Emily, but stopped when they heard her moving around upstairs.

“Honey?” her mom called up to her. “You ready yet?”

She appeared at the top of the stairs, busy putting in her earrings. “Almost, is he…” She stopped dead when she saw him.

She was different. She’d gotten taller and begun to fill out, with narrow hips and long legs. She was wearing a slim satin dress in a rich emerald green that came just to her knees and her hair had grown out so that it fell to the middle of her back in soft, lazy curls.

He’d never thought of her as being beautiful, though he supposed she always was. To him, she was always the skinny, flat-chested, scraped-up girl he’d met when they were eleven, even as she had grown up alongside him. At that moment, though, she was stunning.

She came down the stairs two at a time but stopped abruptly when they were a few feet apart. Her eyes were wide, taking him in, and he knew he was looking at her the same way.

After a long moment, he opened his arms and she rushed in to hug him. Her mother fluttered around and cooed over them, making them stop and take a picture together before she let them leave, despite Emily’s protests. Finally, after finding her shoes and shawl and coat (all in different places, of course), they walked back to his house, where they repeated the picture-taking ritual before getting in the car.

They were at the party for only ten minutes before someone invited Emily to dance. He was an elderly, retired Navy Admiral who knew Hunter’s father, and his polite request to Emily was accompanied by asking permission from Hunter. He blushed and stammered that it was her choice, and she turned her biggest smile on the old man and agreed.

Hunter watched as the Admiral led Emily out onto the dance floor, where the band was beginning to play swing music. She looked over her shoulder once, sending him a wink and a grin, before she began dancing. He slipped away after a moment, figuring he’d find her once the song was over. His father, across the room, sent him a look with a raised eyebrow, glancing pointedly out at Emily, but he just shrugged.

She found him ten minutes later, and they passed the night sneaking sweets and glasses of champagne, whispering between themselves, making up stories about the other guests at the party and laughing. When it got too warm in the main rooms, they slipped out and explored the huge country club, stumbling across an indoor greenhouse where orchids bloomed in profusion. He tried not to stare at her neck and long legs as she stretched to smell the blooms, pink and orange and yellow against her pale skin.

It was after ten p.m. when they returned to the party, hoping that no one would notice their long absence. As soon as they got near the dance floor, Emily’s eyes lit up and she grabbed his hand.

“Hunter, dance with me,” she demanded, pulling him out as the band began playing “The Way You Look Tonight.”

He was fifteen and had, to his embarrassment, never slow danced with a girl before. And Emily, his previously unremarkable best friend, had suddenly bloomed into something so different, mysterious and beautiful and desirable. So when they stepped out onto the floor, he cautiously put his hands rather high on her back. She laughed and stepped in closer, wrapping her arms around his neck. He tried as hard as he could not to blush.

Late that night, he insisted on walking her home. She’d forgotten her gloves and it was cold, so she laced her fingers through his and huddled close as they walked. He, trying to be a gentleman, walked her to her front door and they both pretended that her mother wasn’t snooping.

“Thank you so much for inviting me,” she finally said as they stood on the front porch, shivering in the cold but not wanting to separate.

“Thanks for coming with me. It was a lot more fun with you there.”

She looked down at her hands. It was hard to tell if she was blushing under the porch light, but he suspected she was. “So…Can I see you at least one more time before you go back?”

“Of course.”

She smiled. “Good. Because…” She drifted off and looked back down, and yes, her cheeks were brilliant pink. “I miss you so much when you’re gone.”

“I miss you too.” He reached out and took her small hands in his. Even through his gloves, he could feel how cold they were. “But I don’t go back for another week, so I’ll see you soon, alright?”

She opened her mouth to say something, but closed it again, a look of disappointment crossing her face. “Yeah. Okay. Goodnight, Hunter.”

“Goodnight, Emily.”

As he turned and walked away, he felt his heart sink. It was like stepping back from the brink of some great possibility, a wild chance he hadn’t taken. He was never the one to take those chances.

“Hunter?”

Her voice was accompanied by the sound of running footsteps and before he could stop, she’d grabbed his arm, pulled him around to face her, and stood on her toes to kiss him. He was even more shocked than he’d been when he saw her earlier that night, but when he recovered he wrapped his arms around her and lifted her into the kiss, squeezing her against his chest.

After a moment, though, she broke away and smacked his shoulder, hard.

“You are so _frustrating_!”

“I…What did I do?”

“I can’t _believe_ you were just going to walk away! And here I wore this _dress_ and the necklace you gave me for my birthday, and we were sneaking around all night and dancing together… You just don’t _get_ it, do you?”

His head was spinning. He’d only come around to the idea that he could be attracted to her, so to suddenly found out that she felt the same—and apparently had for some time—was overwhelming and confusing and wonderful all at once.

“I had no idea, Em… I’m sorry.”

She huffed in frustration. “Of _course_ you had no idea. You’re a boy. You’re all dense.” She smacked his arm one more time, but gentler this time. “Call me when you figure it out, okay? Goodnight, Hunter.”

She left him standing on the sidewalk, shivering and flushed. Summer couldn’t come fast enough.

 

They made love for the first time one hot night that August. They’d been outside all day, and when she slipped out of her summer dress and he kissed her neck and belly and thighs, her skin was warm and flushed and smelled of the sun.

They had no idea what they were doing, and he was so scared of hurting her that it was slow and awkward at first. Finally, she burst out laughing and reminded him that she was not, in fact, made of glass, and that made it easier for both of them.

Afterwards, they curled up together in the too-small bed, and he kissed her back and told her he loved her. She laughed and reached over to punch his shoulder, which meant she loved him too.

 

Leaving for school in the fall was agony, and he counted down the days until Christmas vacation when he could go back and see her again. His friends made fun of him for his devotion to her, the way he referred to her as “my girlfriend,” the fact that he dropped everything when she called, but he didn’t care.

He barely took the time to drop his bag in his bedroom before he charged down the stairs and shouted that he was going to see her. He was halfway out the door when his father stepped out of the kitchen. He was always a serious man, but his face was creased with concern and stopped Hunter dead in his tracks.

“Son…Could you come in here for a minute?”

“Yeah. Is something wrong?” he asked when he saw that his mother was already sitting at the kitchen table, her hands folded in front of her.

His father sat down next to her and he sat across from the two of them, feeling nervousness rise up in his stomach. The only time they sat down together were for the sort of terrible conversations none of them wanted to have.

His mother took a deep breath. He knew it would come from her. While she was stoic, she was better at all the “feelings” stuff his father avoided. “Honey, it’s about Emily.”

 

By the time he got to her house he had gotten over the immediate desire to scream, but his chest was still clamped tight and suffocating around his heart. His mind raced. What his parents had told him—the devastating, awful news they had waited to drop on him until he’d come home, keeping it a secret for months while he was away—couldn’t be true. He wouldn’t let it be true.

When he got to her door he was a wreck. He’d chewed his lower lip until it bled. His fists were clenched tight, white-knuckled, holding back the burning desire to destroy everything in his path.

Her mother opened the door. In the four months since he’d last seen her, she’d gotten older, sadder, quieter. He had never seen her without a smile on her face, and he knew then that it was true—and probably worse.

“Hi, sweetie,” she said as she let him in. “I guess they told you already.”

He nodded. “They did. I’m… Mrs. P, I’m so sorry. How are you holding up?” he asked when he finally remembered his manners.

She sighed heavily and didn’t respond, just pulled him into a hug. She was warm and soft and comforting, smelling of rosewater and floral perfume just like she always had. His parents weren’t big on physical affection, so for the last five years he’d gotten it all from her. When she finally let him go, smoothing down his hair in a motherly gesture, she managed the faintest of pained smiles.

“Just go up and see her, honey.”

She was lying in bed, something she never did in the middle of the day. The window was open, letting sunlight and the sounds of the street into the little room She had been reading a book but drifted off to sleep with it laid on her chest. A long-haired white cat curled up in her lap.

He sat carefully on the edge of the mattress next to her knees. She had begun to lose weight, leaving her cheeks angular and her collarbone starkly defined under her skin. Her lips were still full but pale and bloodless, and when he took her hand, he found it warm and dry.

She stirred when he touched her, her eyes fluttering open, and her smile was as bright as ever when she recognized him.

“Hi,” she murmured, her voice breathless and low.

“Hey, trouble. I missed you.”

She pushed herself up in the bed, disturbing the cat, who glared at him and stalked off. She was wearing a tee-shirt from the Navy academy, far too big for her even right after she swiped it from his closet. “I guess you know.”

Tears threatened to well up again, sudden like a wave. “My parents told me.”

She nodded sadly. “I wanted to be the one to tell you, but… my mom thought that you should be, you know, prepared. I didn’t know how I’d be feeling by the time you came back.”

That confirmed it. It felt like he was drowning—the way his chest and throat constricted, fighting against tears he would never let spill. Clarington men didn’t cry. Not even over something like this. “I wish you’d told me,” he finally managed. “I would have come home sooner.”

She shook her head. “I didn’t want you to know. Your parents wouldn’t have let you come home, and to have you stuck there, worrying…”

He squeezed her hand. Her bones jutted through her skin, both sharp and fragile at once. “I would have come home anyway. I want to be here for you.”

She leaned in close so their foreheads touched. Her skin was too warm against his when he reached up and cupped her jaw. He kissed her once, softly, then again and again, trying to find a way to tell that no matter how frightened or worried she was, he would take care of her. They were still a team.

He went over every day as soon as he got dressed--except Christmas, when he had to wait until getting back from his grandfather’s house-- and spent the day with her. They watched movies and played with the cat (“My mom’s idea. She can’t be around all the time, and I can’t do much, so she thought it would help to have a friend.”), but mostly they talked.

He asked cautiously at first, and when she told him, he wished he hadn’t. “Multiple myeloma,” she said. Rare for someone her age. She described it flatly, reciting her doctor’s words, words like “prognosis” and “tumors” and “aggressive” and, worst of all, “months.”

When it was time for his father to drive him back to school, he refused to go. It took four hours of arguing before he got into the car, sullen and silent and heartbroken. They didn’t speak a single word until they parked.

“You’ll call me. If she needs me, you’ll call me, right?”

His father just squeezed his shoulder, roughly, not making eye contact, which meant yes.

 

He got the call in late March. She’s in the hospital, his mother told him. You should come home.

He had to sneak out in the middle of the night, but he caught the first bus, making a friend swear he would cover for him and explain his absence. He didn’t even go home, just directly to the hospital, where she lay, thin and pale but still, somehow, holding on.

He was there for three weeks, sleeping in the chair next to her bed and going home once a day to shower and change clothes before rushing back. He couldn’t even pretend to do his homework and stopped answering his phone.

She was in and out. She bruised and injured easily, so she lived in a haze of painkillers and slept most of the day. Sometimes, on warmer afternoons, he could push her outside in a wheelchair. With the sun warm on her skin, her eyes would brighten up and she’d smile and talk with him, her voice a little stronger.

It was the first day of April when she rallied. She sat up in her bed and shook him awake, giving him the old mischievous grin.

“Hunter. Hunter, wake up. We’re going on an adventure.”

He rubbed his eyes blearily. There was a kink in his neck, the same one that had been there for the whole three weeks. “What’d you say?”

The familiar way she smacked his shoulder was jarring. He’d gotten used to the slow and deliberate way she did things, too tired to waste a single movement. “We’re going on an _adventure_. Tomorrow. We’re going to the mountains.”

Her mother agreed immediately, but it took an hour to get her medical team’s consent, with all three of them arguing their hardest, but when the first doctor caved, he knew he had them.

 

The next day dawned miraculously bright and warm, and when he got back to the hospital she had gotten dressed for the first time that week and sat on the edge of the bed, swinging her sneaker-clad feet. He smiled and kissed her, resting his hands gently on her hips, before lifting her off the bed and into her wheelchair.

Her mother kissed his cheek and repeated her phone number four times, “just in case.” As he walked out, pushing Emily ahead of him, she reached out to stop him.

“I just want you to know…” She choked and took a deep breath. “I just want you to know that she’s been talking about doing this for two weeks.” She wiped away a tear and he realized she was scared—taking Emily from the hospital had no guarantees. If something happened, he wouldn’t know what to do for her. “She loves you so much.”

“I know, Mrs. P. We’ll be back tonight. I promise.”

Emily was already halfway down the hall by the time he caught up to her, wheeling herself toward the doors as fast as her skinny arms could take her. He jogged to catch up, laughing at the look of single-minded determination on her face.

“I hope you’re not going to leave without me,” he teased as he grabbed the chair, propelling them forward a little faster.

She grinned up at him. “The mountains are _calling_ , Hunter, the least you can do is keep up.”

On the drive over she turned up the radio and they sang along to whatever came on, making up the words when they didn’t know them. He teased her when “Moves Like Jagger” came on and she couldn’t whistle. He showed her how, but whenever she looked at him, lips pursed, he leaned over to kiss her, and that slowed her down some. She swiped his phone and took pictures—of him driving, of herself, of the beautiful morning and the mountains in the approaching distance—then filmed them, giggling as she narrated every little thing.

There was no way they’d actually get to the mountains. They were way too far away from the hospital to be safe. Instead he drove them to a park about a half hour away where they could picnic and see them.

He’d packed a full picnic despite the fact that she couldn’t eat much of it, and it took him two trips back and forth to the car to carry everything and set up three layers of blankets on the ground. When he got back the third time, she’d opened the door and swung her legs out, sneakers resting tentatively on the pavement, face tilted up to the sun. There was color in her cheeks for the first time. She looked peaceful, happy.

He stood watching her for a minute before she opened her eyes and smiled up at him.

“You ready?” he asked, extending his arms.

He had to carry her, since the wheelchair they brought from the hospital wouldn’t make it over the rocky ground, but he was strong and she was light as air, all bones and paper skin. He set her down as gently as possible and arranged another blanket over her legs to keep her warm. She wore a heavy soccer sweatshirt—another item she’d stolen from his closet—and a hat her mother had knitted, but was always chilled.

He ate lunch and she nibbled delicately, then they laid down on the blanket and talked and joked and laughed. He told her about how he was being recruited by a boarding school in Ohio, and she told him he should go. She told him silly stories about her friends from her soccer team, who had visited one day before she went to the hospital. She curled up with her head on his chest and he took off her hat to run his hands through her thinning hair. He took pictures of her, dozens of them, because they both knew the only reason the doctors let her out was that it didn’t matter anymore. Months had become days. They kissed and said “I love you” as often as they felt like it, which was constantly.

They packed up and he carried her back to the car when the sun began to go down. She was unusually quiet on the drive back to the hospital, so he reached over to squeeze her knee gently and told her it was okay if she needed to rest while he drove. She slept with her head leaning against the window and he kept his hand on her leg, thumb tracing circles on her jeans.

She woke as he pulled into the parking lot and stopped just outside the doors of the hospital. His chest seized again at the idea of bringing her back inside, knowing it was for the last time.

“You ready to go back in?”

She shook her head sadly. “No.”

He smiled faintly at her honesty. “Yeah, neither am I.”

She looked down at her hands, blinking rapidly, and he realized she was trying not to cry. “Can I…” She drifted off, took a deep, pained breath, and looked up at him. “I want you to promise me something.”

He turned to face her, reaching for her hands. “Anything.”

“When you bring me back in there… I want you to go home. I’m so grateful to you for staying with me for the last few weeks. But this is the end. I know it is. And I don’t want you to see me die.”

The last word was a punch in the chest. It was a wave crashing over him. It was the end of everything. “Em, don’t talk like that.”

“It’s true. I wish it wasn’t, but it is. And I can’t lie to you and say I’m not scared, because I am. But I’m weak, and I’m in pain, and there are tumors in my bones and my kidneys are shutting down and I just… I can’t make you watch that.”

He felt tears welling in his eyes and running down his face. His breath caught in his chest as his throat tightened. She squeezed his hands fiercely.

“I love you _so_ much, Hunter. Today has been the most amazing day. I couldn’t have asked for anything better.” Her voice was shaky. “But this has to be it.”

He was crying then, clinging to her hands like a lifeline, as if he could hold her there. “Please don’t ask this of me. Please don’t, I can’t.”

She leaned over to wrap her arms around him and he cried against her shoulder, wrapping his arms around her waist, feeling the bones of her back even through her heavy clothes. He felt her shaking, heard her sniffling.

“I love you,” she whispered into his ear, her voice thick and choked with tears.

“I love you too,” he murmured into the soft skin of her neck.

She leaned back and gently tilted his face up so she could kiss him. It was the last time.

 

Her mother called him three days later. Her voice was a strangled whisper.

“She’s gone, sweetie.”

After he hung up, he rolled over to bury his face in his pillow. His whole body shook, but he refused to make a sound.

 

He didn’t know how he could possibly face her funeral, but somehow he forced himself out of bed that morning. His father had driven to his school to pick up his only good suit and submit a letter explaining his month-long absence. He knew, somewhere in the back of his mind, that that meant he’d have to go back sometime, but he couldn’t picture a future after that day.

The funeral home was already full by the time they arrived. He knew a few of her friends and he numbly accepted hugs and traded ineffectual words of sympathy. Her mother sat near the door, surrounded by family. He almost didn’t recognize her in a somber, dark blue dress, so unlike her normal flowered hippie clothes.

She stood up when he approached and pulled him into her arms, pressing him so close that for a moment his whole world was filled with her perfume.

“Thank you for coming, sweetheart,” she whispered as she tipped onto her toes to kiss his forehead. “Will you be alright to go up there alone?”

He nodded. “Yeah. I think so.”

He waited a moment until no one else was up there. The top of her coffin was open, the bottom draped with a black shawl and a bundle of white roses. She lay inside, dressed a soft pink blouse he’d never seen before. Her red hair was curled around her face, making her skin appear even paler. They’d painted her bloodless lips a deep, rosy shade and added color to her cheeks so that she almost looked like she had before she got sick.

He took a minute to gather the courage to reach for her hand. It didn’t feel like any time he’d ever held it before—her skin had always been warm and her nails were always bitten and ragged, but now she was cool and dry and no longer there.

He didn’t know what to say. He wanted to tell her that he loved her, that he’d never forget, that he missed her. But he’d told her all that on their last day together, when she was still able to smile, to laugh, to hear him. So instead he leaned over to kiss her forehead, softly, and squeezed her hand once.

As he straightened up, a glint of something gold caught his eye, and his heart constricted painfully. Of course her mother would have made sure she would wear the necklace. It was a simple piece—a slender gold chain with a flower-shaped charm, almost unremarkable.

He bought it for her fifteenth birthday, saving every dollar he made mowing his neighbor’s lawns and shoveling their driveways for nearly a year. At the time, he couldn’t have explained why he wanted to buy it for her, until she opened the box and her whole face lit up. She stammered a “thank you” and discreetly wiped away a tear.

He walked out of the funeral home as fast as he could without being rude, not wanting to fall apart in front of his parents, but as soon as he got outside, he started to truly, painfully cry. He wiped away the first tears roughly, but they came too fast and he sank down to sit on the curb.  He gasped and choked, his body overwhelmed with the sheer enormity of losing her. He couldn’t force himself to stop when the door behind him opened and he heard his father’s voice. “Hunter?”

He turned to look at his father, who stood completely stunned, unsure what to do with his son’s grief. “Could you please,” he managed through the vice around his throat, “just not say anything. Not right now.”

He didn’t, just sat down next to Hunter and pulled him into a fierce embrace, and he sobbed in his father’s arms, helpless.

“It’s not fair, dad. It’s just not _fair_.”

 

The day before he left for Ohio, he went into town to buy flowers. He grabbed them from the buckets in random bunches, picking the brightest colors regardless of their size or smell. When the woman behind the counter asked if he wanted them arranged in a particular way, he just responded, “No. She’d like them this way.”

He hadn’t been to her grave since the day of her funeral. She was far in the back, in a crowded, flat space with no trees. She’d have hated it.

He laid the bundle of flowers on top of the stone, which was inscribed only with her name, the dates, and the word “Beloved.”

“I’m leaving tomorrow,” he began, feeling stupid. “I know you wouldn’t want me to come here. So I came to say goodbye and that I’m not coming back.” The last part caused him a sudden flash of pain, and he bit his lip hard to keep from crying.

It didn’t feel right to be standing above her like that, so he sat down on the grass that had begun to grow there, close enough that when he crossed his legs his knees rested against the stone.

“I really miss you,” he started again, softer this time. “I can’t imagine _not_ missing you. But I hope you would understand why I have to leave. I’ll go see your mom whenever I come back to visit. But I don’t think I can come back here again.” He stood and brushed dirt and grass clippings from his jeans. It took a long moment of deep breathing to stop himself from crying. “So, goodbye, Emily.”

 

The next day, late in the evening, he showed up at his new school with a single duffel bag and the white cat in a carrier. He unpacked and met his roommate, but didn’t feel much like talking.

He had no posters to put on the walls, just a single picture in a simple black frame that went on his desk.

 

~~~~~~

 

Later that night, Hunter lay on his bed, reading through his assigned book for English. Sebastian lay on his bed on the other side of the room, doing the same, the white cat having perched on top of his chest. The boys hadn’t spoken in hours, since Hunter had told him about Emily, but the tension had slowly dissipated.

He heard Sebastian shift and sigh, probably frustrated with the boring assignment. A long moment later, he asked quietly, “What was she like?”

Hunter glanced over, surprised he was asking.

“You don’t have to tell me,” his roommate added, cautiously. “I was just wondering.”

He sighed and set his book down, thinking carefully about how much he wanted to say. “Her name was Emily. You’d have liked her,” he finally began, staring at the ceiling. Sebastian smirked, but he continued. “Really, you would. She was sweet, but she had a hell of an attitude and could probably go insult-for-insult with you. Then she’d turn around and persuade you to do something completely crazy, like the time she got me to help her use the chemistry lab to make fireworks.”

“Sounds like she’d have liked that you stole the trophy.”

Hunter chuckled. “She’d have _loved_ it. Hell, she probably would have helped. That’s what I liked about her. She didn’t plan things out and she was kind of reckless, but she had no fear. She got me in trouble almost constantly, but even when I was mad at her I wanted to be around her, because it was more fun.” He drifted off, still staring at the ceiling.

Sebastian made a soft “hm” sound but didn’t push him for more. Hunter heard him sit up, cross the room and rustle around in a desk drawer, but didn’t look at his roommate until something landed on the bed next to him. When he picked it up, he saw it was a small USB drive.

“What’s this for?”

Sebastian, who was still holding the cat, shrugged. “For the pictures. Just in case you lose your phone again.”

Hunter was so surprised he could only answer a faint “thanks” as Sebastian lay back down and resumed petting the cat. It was a few minutes before Sebastian spoke again.

“So…does this cat have a name, or what?”

Hunter chuckled. “Snowball, I think. Don’t look at me, she was Emily’s. I just call her Cat.”

“Creative.”

“I like to think so.”

They fell back into silence, but more comfortable this time, Hunter half-reading his book and Sebastian idly scratching the cat’s ears.

“You must have really loved her.”

“Yeah,” Hunter responded after a pause. “I do.”

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
